William S. Paxton: Time for Big East to get back to its roots

Updated 2:40 pm, Sunday, December 2, 2012

19 Feb 1996: Guard Ray Allen #34 of the Connecticut Huskies pauses on the court during a break in the action against the Georgetown Hoyas in this Big East match-up at the USAir Arena in Washington, D.C. Georgetown defeated UConn 77-65.
Photo: Doug Pensinger, Getty Images

Those are the messages the Big East administration should be sending out this holiday season to the select few who have yet to defect for greener collegiate football pastures, but continue to keep one eye open for the right opportunity.

But instead of doing the right thing, the RMS Titanic, err Big East, will be chanting the words made famous by Chip Diller in Animal House one year before the conference even existed: "Remain calm, all is well!"

Nothing is going well for the Big East these days, but the conference has nobody but itself to blame.

Somewhere, after forming in 1979, the group lost its way by getting caught up chasing the cash cow known as college football and forgetting about why the conference was formed in the first place.

To play basketball!

The conference has done a fantastic job of it, too, winning six national championships -- including three by UConn -- since it formed.

Football, on the other hand, has produced just two champions (1991, 2001), and Miami departed long ago for a brighter future in the Atlantic Coast Conference. It didn't really matter since the school never fit in with the basketball-rich tradition the conference had developed.

Since the Hurricanes left, do you know how many times the Big East has even had a football team appear in the national title game?

None.

And that trend won't change this season. The remaining football schools are so average and bland right now that they can't even have one emerge from the pack to claim the conference crown.

Coming into the weekend, the Big East has fallen so far off the national landscape that the Mid-American Conference -- a league filled with mid-major schools, mind you -- had surpassed it with two top-25 teams in The Associated Press poll in No. 18 Kent State and No. 19 Northern Illinois.

Both Louisville and Rutgers dropped from that poll after losing to bottom-dwellers UConn and Pittsburgh, respectively. Though, each school continues to cling to spots in the USA Today poll, with Louisville at No. 23 and Rutgers at No. 25. (FYI: NIU and Kent State are Nos. 18 and 19, respectively, in that poll.)

The poll plunges capped a terrible month for the conference, which learned a few weeks ago that it would no longer receive an equal share of the total revenue generated in the new BCS playoff system and also lost Rutgers to the Big 10 and now Louisville to the ACC.

The Big Ten, ACC, Pac-12, Big 12 and Southeastern Conference all retained their top-tier revenue slots, while the Big East moved to the second-tier "Group of Five" along with the Mountain West, MAC, Sun Belt and Conference USA. In other words, the Big East now resides in the land of the have-nots and has to hope a league member proves worthy enough to get the final automatic bid in one of the six access bowls. They also have to find a new TV deal, too.

Good luck with that.

But there's an easy way for the Big East to save face in all this mess. We know football money now rules the college game, but wouldn't it be great if the league got back to its roots?

If anyone on the administration needs a quick history lesson, that means putting a priority back on being a basketball conference. You know, the sport that put the Big East on the sports map.

If UConn, Cincy and USF want to chase the football money, too, just let them go. But instead of bringing in more second-rate football programs -- Tulane, really? -- and begging schools to join in, restock the conference with basketball schools to join Georgetown, Villanova, Marquette, Seton Hall, St. John's, Providence and DePaul.

Butler, VCU and Drexel would be a good place to start looking. Dayton and Xavier would be solid additions, too.

It time for the powers that be in the Big East to salvage its reputation and let the healing begin.

It's time for it to look in the mirror and say, "We are not a football conference, we are a basketball one." And then go out and continue to be a darn good one.